The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA
June 20, 2016
Schreiber (Becoming Jimi Hendrix) claims that Donald DeFreeze, the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)—the radical organization responsible for the sensational 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst—was the creation of both the CIA and the California Department of Corrections, offering conspiracy buffs plenty of red meat, but general readers may find his evidence unconvincing. It is not always evident which sources Schreiber draws on to piece together his theory. He presents Hearst’s pre-abduction state of mind about her eventual kidnapper, whom she allegedly visited in prison, without being clear about his basis for doing so. Hearst was not one of the people whom he interviewed for the book, and yet he states that she “suddenly realized that her exciting, secretive, political prisoner love affair was out of control.” Elsewhere Schreiber provides thin analysis of sources, accepting uncritically, for example, prisoner Robert Hyde’s statement that an officer in the Department of Corrections “ordered” him to recruit inmates to form the SLA. Schreiber credits the SLA with destroying “the credibility of a legitimate progressive movement that protested racism, sexism, the Vietnam War and any form of societal inequality,” but the holey research leading up to these claims makes them hard to believe.